What are the views of Martin Lewis on pet insurance?

18/04/2011

Having made his name from a young age as something of an expert when it comes to cutting unnecessary outgoings in the bud, and optimising your cash flow whatever level it may be at, 38 year old Martin Lewis has now turned his sights to pet insurance. For everyone out there who owns a pet and is currently paying for pet insurance, this might prove to be something of an eye opener.

When asked about his views on pet insurance by English publication The Telegraph, Lewis said "I think people should carefully consider self-insuring instead of getting pet insurance. This means putting money aside in a savings account each month to pay for any potential pet emergency, rather than getting a policy from an insurance company which makes a big profit out of it."

You can't really argue with his logic here. Given that the vast majority of pets will only need medical assistance once or twice, or in some cases never, during their lives it does seem a little excessive to be paying between £5-10 per month for coverage.

In the case of a family who own two healthy dogs that live to be 10 years old each and only require medical assistance twice during their lives, the total cost for pet insurance with a £10 monthly premium per animal would turn out to be a whopping £10,400 over the course of their lives.

In most cases, there's absolutely no way that medical costs for two dogs over their entire lives would come close to that figure. A recent article put the average cost of medical bills for a pet involved in a road accident at just £506, which would mean your pet would need to be involved in a staggering ten road accidents during its life to get your money's worth!

Based on this, we find ourselves agreeing with Martin Lewis. Pet insurance is probably an expense you can do without!

You can check out more of Martin Lewis' opinions on www.moneysavingexpert.com, his digital home which generates more than 10,000,000 unique hits per month.